Corporation Tax
(asked on 5th February 2018) - View Source
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask Mr Chancellor of the Exchequer, what estimate HMRC made of the number of companies liable for corporation tax in (a) 2012-13, (b) 2013-14, (c) 2014-15, (d) 2015-16 and (e) 2016-17; how many such companies were sent a corporation tax return for an accounting period ending in each of those years; how many submitted the corporation tax return (i) within the required time limit and (ii) after the limit in each of those years; and how many such companies were not sent a corporation tax return or a reminder to submit one in each of those years.
The table below sets out the number of taxpayers with Corporation Tax (CT) payable for 2012-13 to 2015-16. Corporation Tax is only payable for those companies with a taxable profit. The latest year for which figures are available is 2015-16.
These figures are available in Table 11.3 of the Corporation Tax National Statistics publication: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/corporation-tax-number-of-companies-income-allowances-tax-liabilities-and-deductions
| 2012-13 | 2013-14 | 2014-15 | 2015-16 |
Number of taxpayers with Corporation Tax payable | 1,030,748 | 1,115,416 | 1,229,502 | 1,369,397 |
HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) sends a notice to file a Company Tax return to every company which it believes to be active, so with any possibility of having a CT liability.
A notice to file a return is for an accounting period of up to one year and is sent to a company in the month following the end of the period. The time limit for submitting the return is one year after the end of the period, but some returns are received after the time limit.
HMRC sent the following number of notices to file in respect of accounting periods ending in the following years:
Year | Number of notices to file (thousands) |
2012/13 | 1,980 |
2013/14 | 2,102 |
2014/15 | 2,431 |
2015/16 | 2,733 |
2016/17 | 3,020 |
The figures include more than one notice for some companies, for example ones that are recently incorporated.
This represents HMRC’s estimate of the number of companies that might be within the charge to CT.
The information in respect of the number of returns submitted within the required time limit, number of returns submitted after the limit, the number of companies not sent a CT return or a reminder to submit is not centrally collated by HMRC. Information on the number of notifications to file by parliamentary constituency is not readily available.